The Universal Machine is a code hard to break

A scene from The Universal Machine at the New Diorama Theatre

Playing at the New Diorama Theatre, London until May 11.

The life of Alan Turing as explored in The Universal Machine is more full of incident than many other academics’. A philosopher and mathematician who predicted the rise of mechanical ‘thinking machines’, his work at Bletchley Park during the Second World War directly led to the decoding of encrypted German messages, turning the tide of the war. In peacetime, an admission of his homosexuality led to prosecution for gross indecency, a sentence of chemical castration and, ultimately, to Turing’s death after biting on a cyanide-laced apple.

His life has been previously been dramatised in Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code, as well as a 2011 BBC drama-documentary, Britain’s Greatest Codebreaker, which saw Ed Stoppard take on the role of the troubled professor. Now, coming at the tail end of the celebrations of the centenary of Turing’s 1912 birth, David Byrne and Dominic Brennan’s The Universal Machine attempts to fashion this tragic true story into a musical.

The biggest problem the show has is that it often seems far more interested in the people around Turing than in the man himself. For much of the time, we are in the company of his mother Sara (a typically strong performance from Judith Paris) – but in so doing, we are subject to the same sense of distance and estrangement with her son that she herself feels. Several ensemble numbers see the rest of the small cast process around a befuddled Turing (Richard Delaney) as he stands mute.

If the intent is to emphasise the disconnectedness this misfit feels, then it is perhaps too effective. It’s also unfortunate, because the two solo numbers in which Delaney’s Turing finally gets to voice his inner feelings through song provide flashes of some much-needed heart. Elsewhere, the schoolboy Turing’s burgeoning friendship with, and adoration of, another lad – mirrored in the Act II by the brief relationship with the man whose act of robbery precipitates the tragic unravelling of Turing’s life – provide flashes of the compelling story waiting to be unlocked. Delaney and Michael Faulkner, who plays both of the men who form such an imprint upon Turing, provide flashes of electricity that are missing elsewhere.

Sadly, the musical additions to the story do nothing to unlock Turing’s own enigma. Performed in the main by the ensemble with traditional stringed instruments, the diversion into electric and electronic sounds as Turing works with his wartime machines is a nice idea. Unfortunately, while a certain amount of repetitiveness can accentuate the mechanical nature of Turing’s ‘Bombe’ codebreaking computer, there’s rarely enough melodic or lyrical variety to sustain the interest. It also feels as if the emotional turning points of the story, those where a musical number would feel most appropriate, play out in stilted dialogue instead.

There are glimmers that the musical is on the brink of making the connection between the disparate elements of Turing’s personal and professional life – but, like the attempts to break the German codes before the war, that’s an enigma which remains frustratingly out of reach.

 Scott Matthewman